Sing for Absolution
by Le Diable
Summary: Mayor Bellwether takes Nick prisoner. AU.


**This fic works on the premise that Nick and Judy didn't think to swap the serum with the blueberries. So technically it's an alternate ending to the film.**

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 **Chapter One**

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When Nick Wilde woke up alone in a small, dark cell, it didn't take long before he began to assume the worst.

There was a heavy metal collar clasped around his neck. His clothes were gone. His fur was drenched in sweat, making him shiver in the chilly air. There was a dull ache on one shoulder, hot and pulsing. But what scared him the most was his mouth, when he had done a quick search with his tongue and realised that the foul old blood caked into his gums and dried around his muzzle was not his own.

Shaking, he poked around his fangs with a claw, extricating each clump and chunk and wiped them on the floor in front of him. Soon, he was surrounded by what were undeniably strings of soggy flesh and clumps of hair that had probably been pale before they were stained red. Grisly artefacts, he thought as he tried not to retch. He failed, and stared down at vomit that was pink and frothy and horrible.

Where did it come from? _Who_?

He forced himself to breathe deeply, even though every breath he took tasted like decay.

 _In...1, 2, 3, 4, 5... Out... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5..._

OK.

His fox eyes had adjusted quite easily to the gloom but there wasn't much to see. The only anomalies within the four concrete walls were a small squat toilet in the corner and a metal hoop in the floor, to which a rusted chain secured his collar. Unless his eyes were deceiving him, he could not see the small, bright-eyed form of his partner.

His heartbeat, thudding in his chest, started to sound like her name. He tried to ignore it, but soon it was echoing round his skull like a chant.

 _Ju-dy...Ju-dy...Ju-dy...Ju-dy..._

Where _was_ she? More to the point, where the hell was _he_?

Nick tried to conjure up his last memory. His head was foggy with fever, only bits and pieces were coming back to him. They had been in Mr Big's mansion, watching Weaslton squirm helplessly as he was dangled over the ice pit. Nick remembered the perfume-y taste of his Earl Grey tea. And then, the chink of metal as they slipped down into an abandoned subway. The hot, stuffy interior of a carriage – eerie lights that made him see double, the stink of old coffee and the shadow of a large man, everything was bright yellow and vivid blue.

Judy's small form, curled up beside him as they crouched in the dark.

Nick suddenly lost control of his breathing. His chest felt unbearably tight but it was too hard to draw air. He was here. Judy was not here. He was here _and he had just attacked someone or something_. And Judy was _not here_.

 _OK,_ _Nick_ , he thought, as he tried to quell the panic, _don't jump to conclusions_. If, and he quelled the urge to vomit again, if this blood and skin belonged to... to Judy, then he must have been a victim of the Nighthowler serum they were investigating, and...

Nick's eyes widened.

 _The Nighthowler serum_. The memories came rushing in all at once. A tiny blue ball being loaded into a gun. A ram clad in yellow, a cold drawling voice. Bellwether, framed between two massive suits. The soft light of the displays casting deep shadows. The wind being knocked out of him as he fell into the pit with Judy. Her voice, hard and unyielding as she yelled up at...

And the words...

"What are you going to do? Kill me?"

"Of course not. _He_ is."

 _He had been in the pit with Judy_...

A shaking finger slipped up under the metal collar. The fur on his neck was stiff and congealed, and the skin beneath burned. He remembered the splash of acid. He remembered Bellwether, the triumph gleaming in her viper's eyes, as she pointed the gun right at him.

Nick looked down sadly at the bloody little bits and pieces. His worst case scenario was starting to become solid, fleshing out before his eyes. She might not be... didn't _have_ to be dead... might be that he had only taken an ear, an arm... something survivable, something that didn't extinguish the light in her eyes.

A sob broke free. Another followed. It became a wail – a stupid, high pitched, primitive sound. Somewhere nearby, in an adjoining cell maybe, another animal joined him. Nick recognised wolf but not the gender. His voice died in his throat at the jarring scrape of metal on metal, and the door to his cell was flung open.

It was a ram, of course, a huge one. He filled up the entire doorway. He stepped into the cell and his horns seemed to scrape along the ceiling.

There was a yelp of pain in the next cell and the wolf fell silent.

A chain rattled. Nick looked down and realised that it had followed him into the corner, where he was now crouched down so low that his belly was pressed onto the cold concrete. An impulse to flee had taken him. The ram gave him a customary look over but as Nick was no longer making any noise, he didn't seem interested in going anywhere near him.

He lifted a walkie talkie to his mouth and said, "The fox is awake." He checked his watch. "14:02pm."

There was no response. The ram suddenly snorted loudly and Nick flinched, his ears pinned back against his head.

"Hey Jesse, get in here a sec."

Another ram poked his head around the door, one eye obscured behind a patch.

"Look at that," the first ram said. He gestured to the little collection of vomit, bloody hair and pieces of flesh. "Think we should package that all up and send it back to Harvey?"

"Go ahead," Jesse said. "But don't come crying to me when he rams you in the dick."

"He couldn't ram the side of a barn in his state."

Nick didn't know what they were talking about. The casual nature of their conversation had somewhat loosened the fear that had wound him tightly into the corner though. He opened his mouth to ask, "Where's Judy?" but the only sound that came out was a croak.

He tried again. "Where am I?"

That was slightly more intelligible but the rams ignored him. The walkie-talkie beeped and the one who wasn't Jesse stepped out of the cell. Jesse's eye returned to Nick.

Nick was not embarrassed by being naked. He was embarrassed by the chain and the collar. It reminded of him of the time he was muzzled at his scout's initiation. And of the time he and Finnick were pulled over at the side of the road for supposedly 'fitting the profile' and the van gutted right in front of all the pedestrians who stopped to stare. And of when he was very small, paw in paw with his mother, whose tightened jaw was the only indicator she could hear the lewd comments being thrown at her from a construction site near their home. It reminded him of every time he felt smaller and less significant than everyone around him, and when you grow up as a fox in Zootopia...

Of course, he wouldn't complain if they gave him a blanket to cover himself.

The other ram returned. And he was not alone. Somehow the sight of the Mayor reinstated a bit of Nick's confidence. This woman was a manipulator; her main weapon of offence was the words that came out of her mouth. In many aspects, Nick was the same. He managed to swallow back a bit of his despair, pushed the image of Judy's bloody, savaged corpse into the back of his head temporarily.

"Assistant Mayor Bellwether," he said as jovially as he could. "Oh, pardon me, it's Mayor now, isn't it? I suppose you had to chuck out your lovely mug."

She blinked. "How do you know about my mug?"

Nick raised an eyebrow. "I was in your office, remember? With Judy? I can picture it clearly - a big rickety boiler, damp walls, the smell of old shit. And you, plonked in the middle of all of it, working your little woolly socks off."

"Oh, where you there too? You didn't leave much of an impression, but I suppose that's the way of a fox." She smiled at him, showing the gap between her front teeth. "You slink in the shadows where honest people can't see you until you've taken advantage in some way or another."

 _Like you slunk in the shadows behind Lionhart?_ he felt like asking. Instead, he forced himself to return her smile.

"Nope, not the shadows this time. I was standing there beside you, _Smellwether_."Her smile twitched slightly. "Your memory seems to be failing you. Have you been banging your head quite a lot recently? I did wonder how you managed to get all these big muscly men rallied to your cause."

One of the rams unsheathed a blunt, heavy baton from his belt. "Shut your filthy fox mouth or I'll knock all your pointy little teeth out."

"No need," said Bellwether. She surveyed Nick for a moment. "You're very confident, fox, all things considering. Shouldn't you be asking about what happened to your poor little partner?"

 _Judy_. Nick's blood ran cold. His makeshift defence collapsed and the fear came screaming back.

"Judy, yes." Nick hadn't realised he had spoken out loud. Bellwether's mouth curled up in the corners. "Nice young girl. What a shame."

"What did you do to her?"

"No, fox," she said. "It's what _you_ did to her."

And there it was, the final confirmation. Nick's paws trembled as they came up to cover his face. The rot in his mouth, the hair, the skin... he had ripped it from Judy savagely, sprayed her blood, _maimed_ her, as she had stumbled away from him on her injured leg, crying out for him to stop. Her friend, her partner... and he had...

He lifted his paws away from his face and they were wet with tears. "Is she – is she –?"

But Bellwether rolled her eyes. "Well, what you were _supposed_ to do to her."

His paws fell to the floor. He stared at her. _What_?

"That's right," she said slowly. "You're so useless you couldn't even savage a bunny with a lame leg. She managed to escape the pit after we shot you. A complete waste of valuable Nighthowler serum." She looked at Jesse. "I overestimated the fox. I didn't realise I could lower my expectations of them any further."

Jesse snickered, but Nick didn't pay attention to their slight. "What happened to Judy? Where is she?"

"She's at work," said Bellwether. There was a loud beep and she lifted her walkie-talkie. "Yes?"

Nick gaped at her. _At... work..._

OK, what the fuck did that even _mean_? He immediately pictured Judy planting parking tickets on cars with her leg in a cast. If she was at work, then surely she'd be rallying the full force of the ZPD to find Nick. Or if Bellwether had told her Nick was dead, then she'd be rallying them to throw Bellwether in a fucking cell. Shouldn't this sheep be a bit more worried?

Unless... it was cold. They were clearly underground. Maybe Bellwether was in hiding.

Or, and for a second he felt completely insane, Bellwether had invented some kind of memory loss serum and Judy was just completely oblivious to everything that had happened since they met. But she had invented a serum to make animals rip their clothes off and go completely savage, so it wasn't completely unlikely...

"Doug's ready," said Bellwether to her guards. "Jesse, I want you to stay here. Woolter, you go down to the Rainforest district and provide back-up. You know the drill."

He nodded.

"Good. Stay safe."

Woolter left. Bellwether slipped her walkie-talkie into her blazer pocket. Her posture had completely changed. She had drawn herself up to her full height, which still wasn't much, and her face had grown harder. She looked older, wearier, like a seasoned soldier preparing to go into battle. "Fox, I'm sure you've caught on by now–"

"No," he interrupted. "I really haven't."

"Well then put two and two together," she said. "I thought your kind were supposed to have wits."

Bellwether turned and swished out the door. Nick scrambled to his feet, the heavy weight of the collar biting into his sore shoulders.

" _Tell me why you've locked me down here!_ " he shouted. But the only response was the click of Bellwether's cloven heels as she disappeared down the hallway.

Jesse slipped the baton back into his belt. "Keep your cell clean."

And with that, the door slammed shut and Nick was plunged back into the dark.


End file.
